We have borrowed the chemicals and the substances that have made it. We have used it and then we return it. But what is the process of that. And the thing that we need to consider is our consciousness. We have an awareness. We have feelings. We have choices. We have experiences. We have opportunities.
There are so many alternative enriching patterns to our life. And then we think about the end of that life and the body through which we have experienced it will return from whence it came. I've used the word, the body through which we have experienced it.
So there is a consciousness involved. There is an awareness. And this is something we need to consider. Our life seems to be a process of opportunities and experiences. There are choices to make and from those choices we have those experiences and the choices are ours.
Hopefully eventually those choices will be ours. They'll be tempered on what we feel is best for us, not from what outside sources may say. In thinking of what is best for us we may establish the thought that kindness is the process of experience so that others benefit from our passing by. This of course enriches the experience.
But the question is, does that all just disappear? Where does the energy of our experiences go? Now we can say it goes into the cosmic consciousness. Because science now is even looking at the very substance of all that we see as being a consciousness. Not a material substance but an energy, a subtle energy of awareness.
There is information and energy. The information shapes the energy. And in that sense the stone remembers it is a stone. Now that sounds a little bit silly but something is holding the stone as a stone.
So we begin to see that there are other levels in our life, not just the material, not just the physical. We experience what happens to us. Not only is it a physical thing, perhaps a falling down, it's a physical experience. But there is an emotional content to that. We are feeling the experience at another level.
One of the things we need to begin to consider is that there is more of us than just the physical body and the physical realm. And we include in that the brain and the emotions and the feelings that are all associated with the physical form that we have. But there is something else.
There is an energy that we can't see, perceive that brings us this awareness. We may experience bursts of this other energy in those moments where our heart center seems to expand in joy or wonder or even in tears. Not because of what is happening outside of us but because something outside of us, it can be anything has triggered a connection at a deeper level.
Now I don't think this is the soul. Historically the soul has been part of us which has gone somewhere when we die but I think it's too simplistic. I think when our physical form has finished its purpose, our energy changes, our perceptions change with that energy. We still remain as we think we are and then there would be a shifting of energy into something else.
This is where it becomes very difficult for us. But when we see somebody who has departed, we notice there is a shift of energy. The energy is not the physical living energy but the energy which sustains that life. The energy behind the scenes withdraws itself and lets the physical form return from whence it came.
We call this “the Watcher.” That other part of us which travels with us on our life's journey. Eastern religions see this much more clearly than we do in the West. In the West we have become very materialistic but we need to broaden our mind and see this is a much more subtle process.
We come into this world in the form of a body and we leave this world as we let go that form. What is after that? Of course this is going to be different because there is no physical form. And that much of our identity which has fixed itself to the physical form must eventually dissipate. And this is where it becomes a very deep mystery for us.
The important thing I feel in this whole conversation is that that other part, that part which came and the part which apparently goes, is far deeper, amazing and energetic in every way than we can possibly imagine.
In fact when we come here into our physical form for our physical life we have to leave most of us behind because it simply won't fit and it travels with us. We can open to it for guidance, clarity and wisdom. It does not judge. It simply travels with us supplying the underlying basic energy for our human life.
And then when our human life is over I like to think the parts merge together in great love and joyfulness but that is beyond our limited understanding.
​

The penguin felt currents others didn’t notice. Pressure shifts. Submerged echoes. He knew that beneath the frozen geometry of the surface there were vast, moving systems, warm and cold colliding, stories unfolding in three dimensions. When he tried to speak of this, the others tilted their heads politely.
“Lovely,” they said. “But can you make it simpler?” “Can you keep it on the ice?” “Can you tell it the way penguins tell stories?”
So the penguin tried.
He flattened the curves of his knowing. He clipped the depths off his sentences. He learned to tell stories with a beginning, a middle, and a clean, reassuring end. Stories where everyone survived. Stories where nothing leaked.
The colony applauded. The stories were shelved.
The penguin was praised for being clear.
And still, the humming didn’t stop.
At night, when the ice groaned and the water called softly from below, the penguin would slip back into the sea. There, in the pressure and dark, his body remembered itself. He didn’t need to explain the current. He moved with it. The story wasn’t told. It was felt.
One day, another penguin noticed.
“You don’t swim like us,” they said.
“I swim like myself,” he replied.
The colony never banned him. They never exiled him. They simply didn’t know where to shelve a story that came back dripping, nonlinear, unfinished, carrying the signal of something alive beneath the ice.
So the penguin stopped trying to be legible.
He told his story where it could be heard.
In the water.
In fragments.
In swimming in its icy depths.
And those who felt the same hum learned to listen, not for the shape of the story, but for the signal underneath it.
Not every story is meant for the shelf. Some are meant to teach you how to breathe at depth.
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©️ 2026 Troy Lowndes. ToneThread.com All rights reserved. Used with Permission. Audio, Pathlight.au

One of the phrases we may often hear is going with the flow. The image, of course, is the river returning to the source, but we're only looking for this particular journey where we come from the source and we return to the source.
​And this is where it becomes quite challenging for us because we really do need to have some direction, some sort of stability in our journey so that we can be led along a path that will suit us, and we can be trustful and let ourselves go into the great river of life.

The time is always now. That is where our center of being is. Through that central self we can begin to see the world around us with a different view. The turning around is to feel within yourself an extra quality, an extra presence. We really have to go back to the simple system of being still and quiet.

We are encouraged to look outwards for our survival, for our pleasure, for our social interaction, many layers where we seek comfort, meaning and purpose.
But a human being also has a consciousness.
It's that consciousness that makes all things part of the one.